The bloggers meet Broadhurst: On the economy, 3000+ attendees and #selfieswithbroadhurst

Our contingent of bloggers had a wide-ranging briefing this morning in with Liberal Party of Canada national director Jeremy Broadhurst – you may know him from the popular new Twitter meme, #SelfiesWithBroadhurst.

Lets start with a few stats. About eight or nine bloggers have been accredited to the 2014 biennial – its unknown how many are Conservative spies. Some six Senators registered, so watch out for them, NDP spies. There were 2500 delegates pre-registered when online registration was closed, and more will register on site. As off last night, over 2000 were on site. For last night only, local Liberals were invited to join for the Lawrence Summers/Chrystia Freeland interview, and Justin Trudeau’s opening speech. Broadhurst expects many of them will purchase a delegate or observer pass and stick around.

“All of them were signing contact cards to get in,” said Broradhurst “We’ve got to get into the mindset in this party that it’s great to have an event and get the message out to a good crowd, but you’re only doing ¼ of your job unless you get their information and engage with them in a two-way relationship after the event.”

Speaking of spies, the NDP has sent staffers Karl Belanger and Anne McGrath and MP Alexandre Boulerice. From the Conservatives, Pierre Poilievre, Lisa Raitt and a staffer from their party office. The Greens have one person, and the BQ didn’t take an observer pass.

One question going in was how the party would handle Senators in the party constitution, following Trudeau’s decision to remove Senators from the parliamentary caucus and exclude them from party organizational roles. Logistically a constitutional amendment can’t be considered at this biennial, but Broadhurst said the national board has decided to put a “sense of the convention” resolution to the delegates.

It will have three elements – that the convention supports the call of the leader, that it calls on the board to prepare necessary amendments for the next biennial, and that in the interim the constitution be interpreted as best as possible to reflect the new parliamentary reality.

“The constitution says the highest authority of the party is Liberals gathered at convention, and that this is the group with the greatest weight in the interpretation of the constitution. So it was decided this would have weight; it’s not a meaningless thing,” said Broadhurst.

Nominations for the next election are getting underway. A meeting has been called for Outremont, for example, as well as several others in Quebec and British Columbia. It’s the decision of the provincial co-chairs to call a nomination, and Broadhurst said a number of factors are considered: are there approved contestants, has there been a candidate search at the riding level, is redistribution complete, and is the riding healthy and strong

Nominations will happen effectively in three tranches, with about 1/3 going this spring, 1/3 in the fall and 1/3 next spring. While held ridings are more likely to go in the first tranche, it will not be limited to held ridings.

“Obviously held ridings are more likely to have a candidate ready to go, and I know a lot of MPs are working to get their forms in and go through the green light process to go in the spring,” said Broadhurst.

While media access was greatly restricted at the recent Conservative convention, Broadhurst said all but a small handful of sessions will be open to the press at the Liberal biennial this weekend

“We do this stuff out in the open,” said Broadhurst. “We’re going to have debates on policy at this convention, whether it’s the right thing to do or not on any resolution, and that’s good. If we came in with 160 resolutions and 160 resolutions passed, what the hell’s the point of that?”

And what they’ll hear across many of the sessions are discussions focused around a core theme of the economy.

“We’ll talk about a lot of important resolutions this weekend, and not to diminish any of them at all, but the next election will be fought on economic grounds. So let’s have a robust discussion about it,” said Broadhurst. “So that’s why we wanted to start with a discussion on the economy with Summers and Freeland, and we’ll come back to that theme throughout the weekend.”

As for the popular #selfieswithbroadhurst meme that has popped up on Twitter that got a bump Thursday when Trudeau joined in for a pic, Broadhurst was bashful

“I’m trying to limit the selfies,” said Broadhurst. “It’s fun though. I love my job, I love what I do, and it’s fun to be able to engage with members at an event like this.”

#selfieswithbroadhurst blogger edition

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Liberal Party is foolishly retreating from social media and blogging

I was disappointed to learn several weeks ago that the Liberal Party of Canada is retreating from its position as one of the early leaders in Canada in recognizing the importance of blogging, social media and citizen journalism to open and fair political debate.

The uproar and bad publicity that ensued when the news broke publicly that the party will not offer media accreditation to bloggers at its upcoming biennial convention was predictable and entirely avoidable, and sends a horrible signal for a party that supposedly hopes to usher in a new era of openness and transparency, beginning with this conference in January.

Liberals an early pioneer


I think some background is on order, because this short-sighted decision by the Liberal Party is all the sadder given our role as an early pioneer in this space. To my knowledge, the LPC was the first major Canadian political party to accredit bloggers to a convention at its 2006 leadership convention, thanks to the efforts of then LPC staffer Tait Simpson and others within the party.

A number of Liberal bloggers, including myself, were issued media accreditation and traveled to Montreal (at our own expense) to cover what (for me at least, as a Stephane Dion supporter) was a pretty remarkable weekend. And it wasn’t just Liberal bloggers. Conservatives such as Stephen Taylor and Tasha Kheiriddin were accredited, as were non-partisans such as Scott Tribe. Scott would later join the Liberal Party, due in part to his experience that weekend.

The blogger accreditation experience was repeated at the 2009 convention in Vancouver. I attended that one as a paying delegate (I wanted to vote for one member, one vote) but a number of Liberal bloggers were issued blogger/media accreditation, as were non-Liberals, such as (usually NDP supportive) blogger John Baglow, aka Dr. Dawg. Bloggers were also accredited to the Canada at 150 policy weekend in Montreal.

The Conservatives followed-up on this successful experience by offering blogger accreditation to their last two conventions, an offer I took them up on earlier this year. I don’t know if the NDP has a similar policy (Halifax was a little far for me to go) but I’d be surprised if they didn’t, and I hope to find out when their leadership convention happens next year.

What is blogger accreditation?


Obviously, you can’t just walk into a political convention and start blogging. You need some form of credentials. You need to be an elected delegate, ex-officio delegate or observer, all three categories which require payment of up to $1100. The other way to attend is a member of the press which, naturally, involves no cost. Organizations generally want people to report on their events. Media generally get a lower level of access (some sessions and events may be off limits), and access to filing facilities and space in the keynote hall to cover the event. Think the press box at a sporting event.

There are different ways to handle blogger accreditation. The simplest is just to issue media credentials. But some parties like to keep bloggers and media separate. At past events the Liberals had a separate filing room for bloggers, and gave WiFi access to bloggers that (I believe) wasn’t provided to media.

I attended the Conservative convention in Ottawa this summer as a blogger, and there it was a little simpler, with no division from the regular media. I shared their filing room and keynote riser, and paid (the convention centre) for WiFi access as they did (or didn’t if they didn’t want to).

Basically, blogger accreditation gets you in the door. Additional support may be offered, but at its basic level that’s all that is expected and required, besides maybe a power bar here or there.

The Liberal position, and why it’s wrong


I learned a few weeks ago the party was retreating from their previous policy and would not be offering media accreditation to bloggers in January. Their position is as follows: we’ll grant you media accreditation if you have ties to traditional media. For example, I could attempt to make a case based on my occasional scribbling for Macleans and the National Post. Otherwise, you need to be either a paying delegate or observer. The observer fee, by the way, is $1100.

Now, this isn’t a huge issue for me personally as I’ve already decided to attend as a delegate. I want voting rights because there are a number of important issues to be decided (ie. No to primaries). Also, the party has said they will provide some support to bloggers that get their foot in the door, offering a dedicated riser in the keynote hall, for example.

But that doesn’t change the fact that this is a foolish decision. For a party that prides itself on its openness -- we spent half of the last campaign bragging about how open we are and how closed Conservative campaign events are -- its simply baffling. We should want people to attend and write about our discussions, be they Liberal bloggers or bloggers of any stripe.

Why are they ending blogger accreditation? I can only speculate. I believe part of it is money, but that’s foolish. First of all, admitting bloggers isn’t an out of pocket expense for the party. We don’t need a filing room or a supply of soft drinks, just let us in the door and maybe give us a table and chairs at the back of the hall. You could argue lost revenue, but let’s be serious. No independent or third-party blogger is going to pay $1100 to come to our little conference, so you were never getting that revenue anyway. Maybe a few Liberals would opt to go the free blogger route instead of being a paying delegate, but with delegate fees at $400 for Victory Fund members you’re talking a few grand in foregone revenue at the most. Is that really worth the bad publicity we’re getting?

Another excuse I’ve heard is that they could be inundated with a flood of bloggers seeking to cover the conference. First of all, so what? I’d think more coverage would be a good thing. Second, I doubt it. Maybe 10 were accredited in 2006, and probably a little less in 2009. I was the only non-Conservative blogger I know of accredited to their convention this year; if there were Conservative non-delegate bloggers they (unsurprisingly) weren’t hanging-out in the press area.

And third, that’s a simple enough issue to deal with. Put a cap on the number of bloggers you can accommodate and set up an application process. The Conservatives, for example, asked me about my posting frequency and traffic statistics. Screening of this sort is normal and expected; it’s part of the job of a media relations staffer. “It’s too hard” is frankly a pretty weak cop-out for not doing what should be a basic part of the job.

Sending the entirely wrong message


Blogging and social media are increasingly recognized as part of the political debate. More and more people are supplementing their news intake by reading bloggers across the spectrum that write in shared areas of interest. In a fragmented media world, social media is another important way to get your message out, which is why it has been embraced by all the parties.

That’s why it’s foolish for the Liberals to retrench and turn their backs on social media, whatever the reason. The fact that the Conservatives are now more open and accessible on this front should give every serious-minded Liberal pause, if they can take their partisan blinders off for five minutes. Myself and other Liberal bloggers, most of whom it should be noted are paying delegates, tried to overturn this policy weeks ago. Our arguments, and warnings of the inevitable fallout, fell on deaf ears.

If all this talk of building an open and accessible party is real and not just empty platitudes, the Liberal Party should either put up or shut up. Our doors are either open, or they’re not.

UPDATE: Now that he has blogged on it, I can say that it was Steve V that first learned of this policy shift. He has now shared his thoughts.

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Welcoming the Wellington Street Post

It's exciting times in the world of political news in Canada. A little while ago we saw the launch of iPolitics.ca, an online news organization ran by journalists dedicated solely to Canadian political news. And today we saw a shake-up of the political blogging world with the launch of the Wellington Street Post.

Unlike iPolitics.ca, or news aggregates like National Newswatch, the Wellington Street Post is about blogging. You don't see many, if any, blog links on NNW or Bourque. The WSP is an aggregate focused just on political blogging in Canada.

While the WSP is an evolution of Liblogs, it's more than just a Liberal blog aggregate. That's still there -- clicking Liberal Edition will give you the best in Liberal political blog posts. But there are also Conservative, NDP, and Green editions, as well as the best blogging from journanlists, lobbyists, politicians and diplomats.

For the first time all the best of Canadian po

litical blogging is aggregated in one place; no more having to hop from aggregate to aggregate to get a sense of what's happening across the political blogsphere. Frankly, I think breaking down those silos and making it easier to get that broader view is a good thing, and will also expose our blogs to a wider and more diverse audience.

The innovation I'm most excited about, which is set to launch soon, is the morning e-newsletter. Lots of people don't want to check an aggregate page regularly. The option to get the clips by e-mail is something that will bring new readers and more traffic to political blog.

I think the WSP page could do with some design tweaks, it's a bit jumbly as you move down the page, but overall I think it's a great innovation. Particularly interesting is the logic behind it which positions posts on the page based on clicks and other metrics, so the most popular pieces rise to the top.

We'll see how WSP is welcomed by the blog community, but if it leads to more innovation, more activity and more competition throughout the community, I think it's going to be a good thing.

P.S.: Here's a news release on the WSP launch.

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In the fight for democracy, social media is far from irrelevant

In November of 2009 I was invited to attend an event called the World Blogging Forum in Bucharest, Romania organized by Romanian foreign language students with support from the Romanian government. I was one of only two North American bloggers (the other was from the U.S.) with bloggers from all around the world gathering to discuss blogging and social media in their countries.

It was a fascinating perspective as the conference proceeded and the discussions occurred, both in the formal hall and in the corridors. There was a very different perspective and views on social media from the bloggers in the democratic/more developed countries, such as Western Europe, and those countries still struggling for democracy and without media freedom, such as the Caucasus, the Middle East and China.

In the democratic world, it was about telling our personal stories, commenting on issues important to us, advocating for causes and, in many cases, sharing ideas on how to monetize on our blogs.

In the countries where they don’t have the democratic freedom we take for granted, where they don’t have the free press we enjoy, where they live daily under oppressive and dictatorial governments, their perspective on social media was very different. For them, social media is a vital tool of empowerment and democracy promotion.

For countries without a free press, blogs are their free press, with actual citizen journalists reporting on events the government wants censored, and that wouldn’t be reported otherwise. And Twitter is their rapid response and organizational tool. Small handheld cameras and video sharing tools like YouTube add another layer, bringing video that would never be shown on state television.

On the first day of the conference, after the Romanian president made an opening address, the first session was on blogging and citizen journalism. I was the last of three presenters on the topic, giving a survey of the Canadian political blogging scene, and how parties, citizens, journalists and politicians are using social media tools.

But I felt incredibly out of place following two speakers from the other side of the equation. Zhou Shuguang is a widely-known Chinese blogger and techie who has been a thorn in the side of the Chinese government, and has spent much of his time burrowing holes in the Great Firewall of China the government has erected to try to censor the Internet. His is a truly impressive story.

But as I read about the amazing events in Tunisia and Egypt, and as I watch the gripping live coverage from Egypt on Al Jazerra English, the speaker I keep thinking back to is Egypt’s Wael Abbas. Before Abbas’ presentation, like many in the West I didn’t know much about Egypt, but I though it was a fairly friendly, free country, particularly compared to many of its neighbours.

His perspective (here's his blog), and his story, was eye-opening. And he also provided examples of how social media then was already playing an important role in the fight for democracy in Egypt, and played a key role in a tug of war between activists and the government that has continued to today, and has now boiled over.

Here’s my report on his presentation. In light of current events, it’s quite prescient:

I had read about the Chinese Great Firewall and its attempts at censoring the Web, often aided and abetted by Western companies looking to stay on the good side of the Chinese government to get access to the lucrative market, but I’m sad to admit the situation in Egypt described by the next speaker, Wael Abbas, was completely new and shocking to me. Abbas is a blogger and human rights activist who was named Middle East person of the year by CNN in 2007.

In Egypt, said Abbas, there’s no protection for journalism, there’s censorship on supposed security grounds, copies of papers are often confiscated and presses delayed or closed, tapes confiscated from videographers, TV stations raided by security officials and tapes seized, all leading to an environment of self-censorship by the media to avoid confrontation with the government.

As a result, he said there was a dire need in Egypt for an alternative form of media to support civil society and provide real, uncensored news to the Egyptian people. The government had been blocking the Web but ended that practice when it wanted to encourage telecom investment. Instead, said Abbas, the government doesn’t censor blogs, but instead harasses, detains and arrests bloggers within the country instead in an attempt to intimidate then into ceasing their activities.

Blogging and citizen journalism first came into its own in Egypt when the mainstream media weren’t covering protests against President Mubarak, election rigging and police violence. Bloggers stepped in to fill that gap and while sometimes the barrier between blogging and activism blurred, the objective approach bloggers tried to take found public support. They presented video and pictures of what was happening and asked people to draw their own conclusions. The media were actually spurred-on by the bloggers, being encouraged to report more of what was actually happening, and publishing blogger content. Opposition parties also reached out to the new media.

Abbas himself drew negative government attention when he published photos of hired thugs that arrested female protestors, and exposed paid pro-Mubarak protesters, and posted controversial video. He has had his Facebook, YouTube and Yahoo accounts shut down under government pressure for his activities, and the government has accused him of being a criminal, a homosexual and having converted to Christianity in attempts to discredit him.

While at its peak around 2005, Abbas said bloggers helped push the envelope for press freedom and political freedom by the opposition, its still under attack and the government’s counter-attacks are working, causing him to lose optimism that real change will happen in Egypt.

It’s hard to see change without international support and that’s hard to get for the situation in Egypt, said Abbas, because there’s not much awareness of the situation internationally. Mubarak is viewed as a moderate friend of the West but people don’t know that Egypt has fake press freedom, fake opposition parties and fake elections, it’s all a mirage.

Despite the Egyptian government's attempts to cut off the Internet in the country to deny this vital tool to the protesters, Abbas is still blogging and posting video on his blog of the protests, arrests and beatings. It's amazing, important, compelling work.

I hope he stays safe.

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If bloggers want to be treated like journalists they should act like journalists

Yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling broadening the libel defence available to Canadian journalists, and opening the door for such protection to be extended to bloggers, reminds me that I’ve yet to blog about the second presentation I made during last month’s World Blogging Forum in Romania.

I mention the conference because my second presentation to the conference (first is here), on the theme of blogging becoming media and professional standards, seems to have a pretty direct link to what the Supremes had to say in yesterday’s ruling.

I’ll leave it to James Morton, Warren Kinsella and Ian Capstick to get into the nitty-gritty of the ruling and how it could apply for bloggers; check their posts out for the details. But I’d sum up the court’s statement as this: bloggers can avail themselves of the same libel protection as journalists, but only if they engage in the same journalistic standards of due diligence and public interest.

And that's not far from my message to my fellow bloggers in Romania (video here, audio is not too good). I’d heard a lot there, and back here, about how bloggers want to be taken seriously as news sources, about how citizen journalism should be considered as legitimate as traditional media, and that bloggers should be granted the same level of access, say to press conference or parliament hill, as the professional media.

My response to them was fine, but if you want the benefits of being a journalist, you also need to shoulder the responsibilities. If you want to be a journalist, act like one. That means respecting libel law, that means making good-faith effort to verify information, that means allowing the right of response if serious allegations are being leveled, and publishing good-faith corrections when appropriate. Basically, it means abiding by certain professional standards.

Right now, I said, the Internet and blogdom is something of a lawless wild west, and as long as that prevails, citizen journalism is unlikely to evolve. Sure, mainstream media readership is declining rapidly and moving online. But people aren’t moving to Joe’s Blogspot to get their news.

They’re getting it, by and large, from the web sites of traditional media outlets. Not directly, but through aggregates that give them content-specific links from sites around the world, but that’s another post.

The point is, people are getting their news online but still from the same professional media organizations. Only the content delivery mechanism has changed. Why? Because we can trust the Globe and Mail or the New York Times. We may have our issues with them, but we know who they are and we know that they subscribe to a code of conduct and certain journalistic principles. I don’t know who Joe’s Blogspot is, so how can I judge the veracity of what they write?

I argued it’s that lack of trust or inability to judge the bonafides of blogs (without regular, long-term readership) that will hinder the wider adoption of citizen journalism. The question then becomes, what are we going to do about it?

Certainty, I as an individual blogger can make the choice to conduct myself according to certain principles. Over time, you as readers can see that I conduct myself in a certain way, and I begin to gain your trust and build credibility. Still, that’s a very long-term process, and happens for each reader one at a time.

Here is where it starts to get complicated, but I suggested something to consider would be a blogger code of conduct. A list of certain principles that a blogger would agree to hold themselves to, and would so state with a badge on their sidebar. Then, even if a visitor doesn’t know the individual blog, they would know at least that this blogger subscribes to this code, and so can have a certain level of confidence in their writings.

Immediately, a number of flaws in this concept were pointed out to me. It would be quite bureaucratic. How would everyone agree on a code? How could it possibly be enforced? Would people be kicked off for non-compliance? Who would judge that? Some countries where freedom of expression is limited would have concerns. All valid points with no easy answers that make such a concept likely unworkable.

So, I’m not sure what the solutions are. Credibility may just have to continue to be earned on an individual, blog-by-blog basis. Perhaps news aggregate communities/publications, such as The Huffington Post, are a better solution as well. Building communities where the credibility of the community is bound by the conduct of its members seems important.

The point though, reaffirmed by the Supreme Court ruling, is that if bloggers want the credibility, and the legal protections, of journalists, they need to conduct themselves in a professional, journalistic way. Because you can’t have the meat without eating your vegetables too.

(Just to add as a post-script, there are many other impediments faced by blogging here vs MSM: the resources for research and reporting for one, not to mention the legal and fiscal resources required to initially defend even frivolous libel charges. But an easy, and crucial, place to start is with our own conduct.)

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Video: On CBC's Power and Politics

Every Friday, CBC's Power & Politics show has a bloggers panel. This week, I was invited to participate in the panel along with conservative blogger Adrian MacNair, CBC resident blogger extraordinaire Kady O'Malley, and of course host Evan Solomon.

I've done some radio stuff before, and I did one taped interview for CTV Newsnet during the Liberal convention in Montreal, but this was my first time with live tv and I was rather nervous. I always like to joke I have a face for radio and a voice for print.

It was an interesting experience. It was done by satellite with Adrian in Vancouver, and Evan and Kady in Ottawa. So I rushed home to shave and change (decided against a tie because, after all, I'm a blogger) and headed downtown to the Mother Corp. HQ on Front Street. A producer brought me in through the halls I recognized from Ken Finkleman's The Newsroom, and into the non-fictional CBC newsroom, where the shoot the satellite pieces.

It's an interesting set-up. At one end of the large, open-concept room there's a little raised platform with a camera and two chairs, that's where they shoot the pieces. And around us, the producers and journalists were at work. I had some time to kill so I took a seat in the newsroom and had a look around. I think they were working on that night's The National beside me, they were watching a live closed-circuit feed of the Montreal/Boston game, and Wendy Mesley came by to check in with them.

When the time for my segment approached I sat in the large chair and they wired me up with an ear piece and mic. It was a little weird because you're told to look directly into the camera and pretend the person you're talking to is there, but you can't see anything there, it' a blank screen. So it's hard to feel like you're really talking to someone. There's a monitor off to the left, but if you look at it you're looking off camera and appear shifty. The camera guy actually tilted the monitor away from me to I guess help me resist temptation, but I still looked over when I was off camera to try to feel a little more comfortable. I think it would be a lot more fun to do it with the other guests in studio.

Content-wise, the segment felt like it went pretty fast, and I think it went alright. I was rather nervous and felt I didn't remember to make all the points I wanted, and I feel I didn't do a good job of what they primarily wanted: talk about how the blogs have shaped the two issues we were discussing, the climate change e-mails and the Afghan torture documents.

On the e-mails, the point I tried to make was that, first of all, I doubt any of the bloggers going crazy on both sides have actually read all 3000 pages of e-mails. Those I've read that have, and considered them in context, conclude there isn't much at all to this story. But by and large, this is red meat for the deniers and a few bad pr days for supporters. But at the end of the day, climate change denial is no longer a mainstream position. There is broad societal acceptance that climate change is real, and we need to act. There is disagreement on what the action should be, for sure. But even the Conservative government agrees climate change is real. Denial is an increasingly fringe position, and no coordinated campaign to hack climate scientists around the world to steal e-mails is likely to change that. But the blogs do give these groups the opportunity to spread their theories and find like-minded supporters, and spread their views with or without the MSM.

On the torture e-mails, on this one I don't think the blogs have been necessarily active in shaping the story. There have been cases where the media have ignored a story for whatever reason, and after much publicity on the blogs they were forced to cover it. In this case though, the media and the blogs have both been all over it from the start. The blogs have been doing some good watchdog work though -- they were all over Christie Blatchford -- and have been helpful tracking the shifting changes in Conservative positions from day to day and keeping things in context. That's perhaps the best difference blogs can make: they can be more analytical and big picture. The MSM tend to focus on spot news without considering the wider context.

Things seemed to veer off there when Adrian took what seemed to me a shot at Kady's journalistic ethics, which naturally Kady and Evan took exception to and led to a spirited back and forth while I watched a little incredulous from Toronto, pondering if I should have prepared an attack line against my hosts (maybe something like "Evan Solomon, Don Newman was a way snappier dresser!").

I thought Adrian was off-base. The climate gate nonsense has gotten plenty of media play, certainly more than it deserves. To compare it to the torture e-mails is a false comparison. The torture story speaks directly to the behavior of the Canadian government, and has wide-ranging consequences for both the government and our mission in Afghanistan. The climate story may impact support for stronger action on climate change going into Copenhagen, but that's debatable. And while the people pushing the e-mail story insist it's the scandal of the millennium or something, they're unable to prove their case definitively. So instead, they play that favourite tool of the right: blame the media.

Finally, we ended with the sites of the week. I picked The Pundit's Guide, great non-partisan site for tracking party nominations, and for analysis and data on party fund raising and spending. Adrian went with the Canadian Blog Awards (where I'm nominated for Best Political Blog, btw, if you'd like to go vote early and often) and Kady went with Wikileaks.

Without further ado, the video:

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Day 1 in Bucharest for #wbf2009, the opening

When I began my Google and Wikipedia research on Bucharest and Romania in preparation for the World Blogging Forum this week, I was very interested to read about some of the history of the venue for the conference, The Palace of Parliament.

Commissioned at great cost toward the end of Nicolae Ceauşescu’s Communist regime to house the parliamentary and presidential facilities, it’s the world’s largest civil administrative structure and is second only in size to the Pentagon. In person, though, it’s quite the sight. We saw it first at night glowing from blocks away, and as we pulled up to it this morning for day one of the conference it was even more impressive.

There are big chandeliers, high ceilings, large reception halls, paintings, sculptures, and lots of marble everywhere. Not uncommon in Europe, but it’s kind of striking to see a relatively new building constructed in this style. Anyway, cool place for a blogging conference but enough architecture, on to the blogging.

After we settled into the Human Rights Hall of the Palace of Parliament, the first big item on the agenda was a speech from the President of Romania, Traian Basescu. Was pretty good to see the head of state come out for the conference and, even better, he didn’t deliver a boiler-plate welcome and thanks for coming speech, but actually had some substantive thoughts to share on the topic of the conference.

Basescu, who you can follow on Twitter (@tbasescu), said as an Internet user he believes the Internet is the freest means of communications yet invented because promotes pluralism and enables dialogue on a global basis, bringing the freedom to communicate at a global level. People aren’t along on the Web, they’re part of a community where they can find support.

In Romania, Basescu said blogs are relatively new but they’re becoming well established and consolidated. And he said he finds the political analysis is better in the Romanian blogs than it is in the traditional press in Romania, because bloggers are less dependent on economic and political interests. The media here, he said, aside from the state channels are dominated by private press with business interests that influence their coverage and seek to influence policy with their coverage to advance business interests. Many journalists, he said, are seeking refuge in blogging as a way to escape those shackles and report freely.

I thought Basescu made a really good point when he said that, with the freedom of communication and expression of the Internet and blogging, there must also be accountability and responsibility taken by bloggers for the information they publish. When one has freedom, one has responsibility

While Basescu doesn’t believe there’s a place for government regulation here, he does want to see bloggers step-in themselves with self-regulation, agreeing amongst their selves globally on common-sense rules of practice.

Another interesting speaker from the morning opening was Loic Le Meur, the founder and CEO of Seesmic (A Twitter/social media viewer) and host of the LeWeb conferences in Paris.

Le Meur made an interesting point that while advances such as the printing press, the telephone and telegraph, cinema and television were all momentous, the Internet was truly ground-breaking as a communications breakthrough because while the others were good at either mass (one-way) communication or just a one-on-one conversation, the Internet is the first to bring both aspects, mass communication and interactivity, together natively.

I parted ways with Le Meur when he said professional media will never be the main source of information because they’re outnumbered by users, because twitter is so immediate, and so on. I don’t buy it. Le Meur talked about learning about an earthquake in China on Twitter six hours before it hit CNN. He also talked about how, with the US Army clamping-down on information access after the Fort Hood shootings, on Twitter individual soldiers were putting information out there uncensored.

Le Meur added that traditional broadcasters jumped on the soldier’s tweets, reporting them, only later to learn much of the information was incorrect. The annoying “twitterization” of the MSM aside (balloon boy coverage comes to mind), this example seems to me to illustrate why twittering won’t replace the MSM: I don’t know if I can trust what I read from random twitter guy.

What I think needs to happen, and is slowly happening (Le Meur agreed) is that traditional media needs to adapt to social media. What we need is a marriage of the best of traditional media (research, fact-checking, ethical and moral standards, etc.) with the best of social media (immediacy, interactivity, multiple platforms of content delivery). There will always be lots of information on the blogs and on forums such as Twitter, but the signal-to-noise ratio is high. It’s the trusted names that will rise above, and the brands of the MSM in that regard as they enter the new field are strong, I feel.

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Day O in Bucharest for #wbf09

(Note: This post was actually written Monday night local time, before a bus full of bloggers all got back to the hotel, fired-up their laptops and crashed the WiFi. Bloggers!)

I’ve arrived safely in Bucharest for World Blogging Forum 2009, and really must get some rest before what looks like a daunting schedule for Tuesday but first, it being a blogging conference, I must blog.

After catching most of the first half of a fun Hockey Hall of Fame Legends game at the ACC on Sunday afternoon, I left to catch the shuttle out to YYZ for my evening flight on the Polish Airline, LOT, to Bucharest, Romania via Warsaw, Poland. I’d read some questionable reviews of Lot so I didn’t know what to expect but, really, it wasn’t that bad. Seats were cramped but I got an exit row and an empty seat beside me, so that was a plus. Free wine helped. The food wasn’t bad, a stuffed chicken breast with potatoes and vegetables that could have been hotter, but filled me up. Big strike was no in-flight-entertainment. There was the always enjoyable moving-map, but no movie or anything for over eight hours was puzzling. Luckily, sleep and a book passed the time well enough.

Transfer in Warsaw was painless with no customs to clear and the airport easy to navigate, the flight to Bucharest was comparatively brief at just under two hours, customs/passport control was a breeze and my bag actually beat me to the baggage claim, which never happens. And thankfully there was a representative from the World Blogging Forum there to meet me and some other bloggers at the airport, as I wasn’t looking forward to navigating the Bucharest transit system solo.

The drive into Bucharest from the airport was about an hour long, and it revealed a city that is an interesting mix of old and new, and of western and traditional influences. Within two minutes we passed a MacDonald’s and a giant Ikea, as well as a Jaguar dealership. There’s much construction, still a smattering of plainly communist-era edifices (mainly in the city centre) and mainly older buildings. You see this mix in most European cities but, in my first trip to Eastern Europe, many of the older buildings seemed much worse for the wear here than elsewhere. Also, there was certainly more of an eastern/orthodox influence in the architecture.

After checking-in at our hotel and dumping our bags, it was off with my fellow bloggers on the bus to the welcome party. And that brings me to another observation about Bucharest: the traffic here is crazy. Not Bangalore-bad, Bangalore was madness, but it was jam-packed and people were constantly jockeying for position, with lights only sometimes obeyed. It made for an interesting trip.

Had a great evening getting to know some of my fellow bloggers as we talked about social media, application development, sports and, of course, blogging. Met some really interesting people from the U.S, France, Holland, Hungary and elsewhere, enjoyed some Romanian wine that seemed to taste better with each glass, and enjoyed some good food, Romanian and otherwise.

And then, after more than a few glasses of Romanian wine, we learned that a) we’ll be meeting the president of Romania at the conference tomorrow, and b) we all have to give speeches to the conference tomorrow as well. That ended the festivities in a panic as we all rushed to the bus to head back and try to prepare to sound intelligent tomorrow.

I’ll be part of a panel in the morning with bloggers from China, Egypt, Germany, the Netherlands and elsewhere speaking about blogs and citizen journalism, the influence of blogs on the civil society, and standing-up for the community. I’m trying to formulate thoughts, but if you have any to share on the topic, please, please do.

I’ll let you know how it goes and will hopefully have some live-blogging and tweeting from the conference tomorrow, as opportunity and WiFi permits. I think it’s going to be a great conference. Thus far the hospitality of our Romanian hosts has been amazing, and it seems like they’ve assembled a really dynamic group of bloggers and social media activists.
Really makes me wonder what I’m doing on the guest-list at times, but I shall soldier on. Perhaps I’ll speak to the president about the Romanian visa situation. Alert Minister Kenney. :)

P.S. Two lessons learned: Put your room keycard in the slot on the wall to make the lights work. And the power button on the remote turns off the tv, but channel-up or down is how you turn it on.There's a presidential election on in Romania, and campaign signs are everywhere. I think this rather stern-looking fellow (they all look stern, actually) is from some sort of "Liberal" party.

Never mind KFC, although they have that too. But they also have Bucharest Fried Chicken, or BFC. Seems like a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Blurry from the bus at night picture of revolution square, and memorial to overthrow of communism.

Meeting Dutch blogger Ramon Stoppelenburg and two of the organizers of WBF.

Our traditional Romanian dinner.

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Off to Romania next week for the first World Blogging Forum

On Sunday I’m off on a little adventure, beginning my journey to Romania to be a guest at the first World Blogging Forum, to be held in Bucharest.

When I first received an invitation last month to be an invited guest at an event called the World Blogging Forum I was skeptical, but after some research and as more information became available it turned out to be a really interesting event that will bring together bloggers and new media journalists from around the world to discuss blogging and related topics.

Here’s a list of the topics on the agenda:

• Blogs & citizen journalism – global trends
• The influence of blogs on the civil society
• The importance of blogs for the governmental organizations
• E-Government – Democracy through participation
• Enviromental blogging and activism
• New media & renewable energy – using blogging to build a self-sustainable world
• Freedom do differ – ideas worth fighting for
• Business and Corporate Blogging
• Ethics & responsability – growing a healthy global community
• Blogging and global politics – building a better world
• The future for blogging – what’s next?
• Blogs and Education – new skills for the new world (Using New Media to Help Teachers and Students Achieve Excellence)
• Researching Blogs and Blogging Research
• How to Monetize Your Online Media
• Behind the Scenes – blogging and new media
• Mobile democracy – the truth is live and in full streaming
• Standing up for the community
• Science blogging and sharing ideas
• Sharing ideas – the global playground
• Opening the world – promoting transparency on a global scale

Some of the other guests on the roster also appear quite interesting, and really speak to the difference that blogging and new media is making in other parts of the world. While its more hobby and sideline here, in places with a less-developed traditional media its making a real impact.

For example, Zhou Shuguang has been active fighting media censorship in China. And Giorgi Jakhaia’s work chronicling the plight of civilians in Georgia made him the target of denial of service attacks. Some really interesting people with interesting stories and perspectives. It make me wonder what I’m doing on the same roster, but I look forward to learning and sharing my perspective.

I’m not currently aware of any other Canadian bloggers that will be attending, so I’d appreciate hearing your thoughts on the topics above and on blogging and new media in general, so I can bring your perspectives to the conference as well and share them with the group. Feel free to begin a debate on the comments or send me an e-mail if you prefer. I’ll also be posting regular blog and video coverage of the conference throughout the week next week, as Internet access permits.

I’m also looking forward to seeing something of Bucharest and Romania. I’ve traveled extensively throughout Western Europe, but this will be my first time visiting the East. It’s an interesting time to go, coming 10 years after the fall of communism. Under the Ceauşescu regime they had it particularly difficult. It will be interesting to see how they’ve progressed in the decade since his ouster.

I fly out on Sunday night on Lot (the Polish airline) via Warsaw, which should be an adventure in itself. I've read some questionable reviews. Haven’t flown Lot before but at least it’s Star Alliance, so Aeroplan points! The conference runs through the week and I head back Friday.

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Go Canucks! The playoffs get political

A good start to the playoffs by my Vancouver Canucks last night. They need to watch the penalties or they’re going to get burned, but 5on5 they were stellar and Bobby-Lou was his usual awesome self. The man has something to prove, so watch out.

This isn’t a sports blog though, so let me bring it back to politics. Getting politicians to blog and embrace social media has always been tricky. If they get too real and unscripted, it can backfire. But canned repetitions of talking-points ghost-written by comms staffers are boring, and run contrary to the rules of the medium.

With the BC election mirroring the Stanley Cup playoffs the Vancouver Sun is trying a novel approach to this dilemma: invite BC Liberal leader Gordon Campbell and BC NDP leader Carole James to blog for them … about hockey.

Yes, while Stephen Harper is pretending to write about hockey, Campbell and James actually will be.

The Sun is calling the joint Campbell-James blog “Faceoff” and it got underway yesterday. So far, Gordon has filed three entries and Carole has filed two. Or, more likely, their staffers have.

Here’s some post-game analysis from Gordo:

Getting Sami in on the scoring bodes well. We always do well when our defense plays their game, and then scores a goal or two for good measure…I also thought Ryan Kesler showed how a real leader contributes without necessarily scoring. It's not just scoring goals, it's stopping them…The Blues will get better, but with that game under their belts, so will the Canucks. It was a game where special teams did as much as could have been expected and we got the W.

And some pre-game scene-setting from James:

I'd like to think that playoffs are a lot like the election campaign…Anything can happen. It doesn’t matter what happened in the regular season. I feel optimistic about the Canucks’ chances in the playoffs. They've got their game together and they’ve been going in the right direction for the past several weeks…The Stanley Cup playoffs are a marathon, not a sprint. The campaign is the same. You can’t afford to conserve energy, but you can’t be frivolous about it either.

It’s early, but so far it seems Campbell is focusing more on hockey analysis while James is trying a little harder to draw political parallels. Or maybe Campbell is just being subtler.

We’ll see how the experiment goes. And maybe the Sun can invite some Canucks to write political blogs. Does Mats Sundin support the carbon tax? Does Roberto Luongo favour electoral reform? Inquiring minds, etc.

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BCer 3.0

You may have noticed I've changed the look and feel of my blog, and I'd welcome any thoughts you may have.

I've been putting off moving to one of the newer blogger templates for some time because of my natural resistance to change, but I decided to finally take the plunge and it was actually easier than I'd though to port most of my sidebar stuff over to the new design.

I like the new template, it makes better use of the screen (particularly on wide-screen displays), the text is easier to read, and the simple white background makes graphics pop a little more. It's a more simple, less is more, focus on the content design that is hopefully easier to read.

The new blogger template also makes it easier to add various widgets, such as a Digg.com button and a button to share posts on Facebook and other social media services. I do still need to do some experimenting to get the Progressive Boggers vote button back though.

I'll keep tweaking over the next few days, but I hope you like the new look.

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A plea for sanity that will be unanswered

I’m not under the impression that anything I write or don’t write will make one iota of difference to anything happening in the Middle East, and none of us really have enough information about what's happening on the ground to be making definitive judgments.

I am getting increasingly frustrated at some of the garbage I’ve been reading of late on the Liblogs aggregate though. I’m staunchly in favour of people’s right to free speech, even if what they say makes them look stupid, and luckily that same right to free speech also allows me to speak-up and say so when people are saying stuff that is pretty dammed stupid. And there’s been a lot of that the last few days.

Stupid like implying that, because the Liberal Party thinks Israel has the right to defend itself from constant rocket and terror attacks, that the Liberal Party is directly responsible for the death of 40 people at a school in Gaza. That’s absolutely ridiculous. I’m not sure what this blogger is trying to accomplish or contribute here, and I echo Red Tory’s sentiments. If you really think “Liberals” are “kill”ing people, maybe you’re supporting the wrong party. Actually, strike the maybe. You are.

So many on both sides of this issue see it as either/or, which is why I’m generally loathe to engage in it. And they automatically dismiss anything that doesn’t fit their bias. Take this attack on the school yesterday that killed 40. According to reports Hamas militants were using the school as a base/shield for attacks. It seems to be a common Hamas tactic. But I read many blog commentaries that either fail to mention the reports Hamas was using the school as a shield while they condemned the Israeli attack, or dismissed it outright as lies and propaganda. Why, because a terrorist organization like Hamas would never do such a terrible thing? Please, that’s stupid. You must know better than that. They’re terrorists!

This blogger even went as far as to claim Israel is deliberately assassinating innocent civilians, a completely asinine contention that, even if we accepted it, makes absolutely no sense. Why would they do that, exactly? For kicks? Because they’re evil? What military purpose would it serve?

Let me be clear. I think the death of those 40 people is tragic. I think Israel should do everything it can to avoid civilian casualties, and I think Hamas should as well, and that includes stopping using civilians as human shields. But if Israeli forces are taking fire from Hamas terrorists shielding themselves with civilians, what exactly are they supposed to do? There’s no easy answers there. And to just blame one side in that tragic situation, and for that side to NOT be the people using civilians as human shields, is just dammed ridiculous.

As I’ve said before, I’m loathe to wade into the Middle East mess. But I’m also loathe to be associated with some of the anti-Israel bigotry that has been appearing on the Liblogs aggregate. And while people are free to expose their stupidity, I’m going to speak up to make clear I don’t support it.

Oh, and not for nothing, but maybe Sid Ryan should spend more time trying to get York TAs back to work and less time making an ass of himself. This kind of bullshit is why labour unions, which have and do play important roles in our economy, get a bad name.

Finally, while I’m talking about things that piss me off, let’s talk about Ezra Levant. Ezra is playing a patently transparent game that is extremely repugnant and obvious.

First, he’s cherry-picking examples of objectionable comments by some Liberal bloggers to impugn all Liberal bloggers, and by association the Liberal Party as a whole. That’s idiotic. A diversity of opinion has been expressed on the aggregate, from pro and anti either side to a more middle of the road view. And if we’re going to tar all members of an aggregate, and the political party they support, with the views of a few of its members, then as members of the Blogging Tories, Ezra, Stephen Taylor and co. have some explaining to do, as does Stephen Harper, because they have some serious moonbats in their midst.

Secondly though, what Ezra is trying to do here is use the Gaza crisis as an opportunity to score political points for the Conservative Party, in whose war room he worked last election, by convincing Jewish voters the Liberal Party is anti-Israel because of the comments of a few rogue bloggers. The fact Ezra is trying to use this war, and these deaths, to score political points is utterly repugnant and shameful.

Finally, once again, here is my view on Gaza and the larger Middle East quagmire. And while there are hardliners on either side, I think the majority are, like me, somewhere in between, and those that seek to polarize things aren’t helping anything at all.

I have no easy answers on the Middle East. Obviously, no one does. I believe in a few things. I believe in a free, safe and independent Jewish state of Israel, and I believe that country has a right to defend itself. I also believe in a free, safe and independent Palestinian state that also recognizes Israel’s right to exist, and the rights of both its peoples to live in peace.

On the current Gaza conflict, I believe Israel has the right to defend itself, and that includes from the ongoing and regular rocket attacks, and it has a right to take actions to try to stop those attacks if local authorities are unable or unwilling to do so.

That said, it’s unclear to me how the current military campaign, which now includes a ground attack, will accomplish either Israel’s short-term or long-term objectives. Indeed, it may well only serve to breed new hatred against Israel amongst the Palestinian people, creating yet another cycle of violence and attacks. Their options, however, are limited. And stuck in the middle are the ordinary people that just want to live their lives.

I'll add that this war in Gaza needs to come to an end now. Caught in the middle of Hamas and Israel are the innocent civilians, and no matter who you blame, they're paying too high a price. I support an immediate cease fire, but a cease fire that returns to the status quo, a barricaded people in Gaza and rockets raining on Israel, is unacceptable. I don't think Israel can disarm Hamas by military means. But it's incumbent on the international community to give them another option. End the war, get aid to the civilians, disarm Hamas. How? That's for people smarter than I.

With that, I am off to have lunch and await the vitriolic slings and arrows from all sides, some of which will even make it out of moderation.

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Stepping into the minefield

I’ve learned a few things over my three years as a blogger: funny is good, rum and coke + live blogging=great blogging insight, and don’t feed the trolls. If there’s another rule I’ve adhered to, it’s that you don’t touch the Middle East with a 10-foot poll. You can’t win, and there’s little appetite for nuance on either side.

I’m going to break that rule though, which has served me well, as it seems that with the current Gaza conflict things are getting out of hand in Liberal blogdom, with some unfortunate things being said in the heat of emotion that I think many will come to regret later.

I have no easy answers on the Middle East. Obviously, no one does. I believe in a few things. I believe in a free, safe and independent Jewish state of Israel, and I believe that country has a right to defend itself. I also believe in a free, safe and independent Palestinian state that also recognizes Israel’s right to exist, and the rights of both its peoples to live in peace.

On the current Gaza conflict, I believe Israel has the right to defend itself, and that includes from the ongoing and regular rocket attacks, and it has a right to take actions to try to stop those attacks if local authorities are unable or unwilling to do so. That said, it’s unclear to me how the current military campaign, which now includes a ground attack, will accomplish either Israel’s short-term or long-term objectives. Indeed, it may well only serve to breed new hatred against Israel amongst the Palestinian people, creating yet another cycle of violence and attacks. Their options, however, are limited. And stuck in the middle are the ordinary people that just want to live their lives.

The only real answer is a lasting peace, but that would require compromise on both sides as well as a willingness and readiness to make peace, pre-conditions that are not yet in place.

Until that mythical day I hope my blogging colleagues on either side will be measured in their rhetoric and hyperbole, think carefully before they click Post, and consider that little here is as black and white as we’d hope.

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Let’s be blogsphere leaders as well

With the national executive of the Liberal Party meeting this weekend to set the site for the leadership convention and the rules that will govern the leadership process, the Liberal leadership race is about to begin in earnest, both in the real world and on the blogs.

Like last time, I believe the blogsphere can play an important and influential role in the leadership race, to a far greater degree than we’re able to during a general election. During a general I think the impact of blogs is still relatively minimal – unless we screw up. That’s because blog readership tends to be limited to those with a heightened level of interest in politics; as such, they tend to have their votes set already. So the ability to influence is minimal.

In a leadership race it’s exactly those readers that we want to reach. People who are active in political parties, and likely to vote at a delegate selection meeting or be delegates themselves, are more likely than the general population to be blog readers. And, more and more, they’ll be turning to the blogs for news and analysis of the different leadership candidates as they decide whom to support. The media will also be turning to Liberal blogs as a source of leadership happenings, momentum, and buzz.

That is both an opportunity for us as bloggers, but it is also a responsibility. Let us take advantage of it as such. There may be a temptation for some to use blogs as a way to attack other candidates, to spread malicious gossip, and to otherwise advance the cause of their chosen candidate by bringing down the others. That would be a mistake. Not only will it hurt the Liberal cause, it won’t reflect back well on your own candidate either.

We’re all Liberals. Let’s remember that, and let us online set an example for how Liberals can have a spirited debate about the future of our party and its leadership while still respecting each other, and all the candidates. Let us use these public forums to advocate for our candidates in a positive way. We can make the case for our candidate without making the case against another.

And, most of all, let us use this period of opportunity, when leaders are seeking support and when Liberals and the media are more closely following the blogs, to be advocates for the type of Liberal Party we want to see, for the changes we think are needed, and for the direction we think we need to take. Whatever small modicum of power we may briefly have, let us use it for good.

Good luck to all.

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Bloggers on CBC's The National

Last night CBC The National ran a report on blogging and the federal election. There was footage and interviews from the Progressive Bloggers BBQ and interviews with bloggers Jason Cherniak, Devin Johnston and Steve Janke.

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Links on bloggy and copyrighty issues

*Good news for advocates of copyright reform and fair use, as long as you live in the United States that is:

U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel has ruled that fair use -- a complex set of exemptions to copyright meant to allow for commentary, criticism, and parody -- must be taken into consideration before rightsholders request the removal of infringing content from websites like YouTube.

Here in Canada, alas, Jim Prentice is trying to ram through a far more draconian copyright approach on behalf of the Conservatives and their friends in industry.

*Bad news for anonymous blog commenters:

Take EDF Ventures, an obscure Michigan VC firm, which may well have gotten a bum rap on TheFunded.com, a VC-ratings site. After issuing a subpoena to find the identity of the entrepreneur who said the VC firm was "to be avoided unless you are desperate," it has now filed a lawsuit against the anonymous commenter. "If someone lies about you, it isn't right," says Mary Campbell, the firm's founder.

Reading the comment they’re actually taking issue with, EDF seems rather overzealous in initiating legal action here. I just hope they don’t sue me for saying so.

*Still on anonymous blog commenters, Wired has a much different, and more important, story on relating to the issues of Web anonymity, how it can be misused, where the privacy lines should be drawn, and what the role of the courts and libel law should be when the Web is used to attack and defame:

"Women named Jill and Hillary should be raped."

Those are the words of "AK-47" -- a poster to the college-admissions web forum AutoAdmit.com. AK-47 was one of a handful of students heaping misogynist scorn on women attending the nations' top law schools in 2007, in posts so vile they spurred a national debate on the limits of online anonymity, and an unprecedented federal lawsuit aimed at unmasking and punishing the posters.

Now lawyers for two female Yale Law School students have ascertained AK-47's real identity, along with the identities of other AutoAdmit posters, who all now face the likely publication of their names in court records -- potentially marking a death sentence for the comment trolls' budding legal careers even before the case has gone to trial.

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You kids get off my lawn or I'm keeping your laptop!

I don’t subscribe to the theory that blogging will mean the death of the mainstream media. I do, however, think that journalists and media outlets that don’t adapt to how the new media is changing journalism will perish and fade away, and some day the rich deposits of those old media journalists running through the ground beneath Toronto will be drilled and used to power our flying cars.

I bet Christy Blatchford alone could get your flying car all the way to Obamatown (renamed from Washington, DC in 2020). Christy writes today from the Beijing games about these young whipper-snapper reporters and their infatuation with “blogging” about the games:

The unofficial end to journalism as I know it may have come earlier this week, when my Globe and Mail sporty colleague Matt Sekeres and I were at the triathlon venue in the north end of the city, waiting for the event to start. … Mr. Sekeres is a fine writer and engaging company. This isn't about him. He was merely doing what everyone - from paid professional writer to Olympian to the average guy in the stands - does now. He was committing his most idle thoughts and mundane observations if not to paper, then to its modern equivalent, a blog.

Because Christy’s idle and mundane thoughts are much more engaging in dead three format. But let’s turn serious for just a sec:

And journalism wasn't meant to be a conversation, anyway. It was maybe a monologue, at its most democratic a carefully constructed dialogue. If readers didn't like or agree with the monologues in paper A, they bought paper B. What was most important about their opinions was that they thought enough to spend the coin.

Or, we the journalist don’t care what you the readers think. You can’t do what we do. We’re right, you’re wrong, and if you don’t like it suck a lemon. And people wonder why people don’t like journalists.

I can assure you, however, that her thoughts aren’t reflective of where the field of journalism is going, they’re just the thoughts of an older generation ill-adapted to change. Under the influence of things such as blogging and Web 2.0, journalism is becoming more immediate. That’s not a new trend, journalism has been becoming more immediate for a hundreds of years, from periodicals to the news weekly to the daily newspaper to radio to television to the Web. And it’s becoming more visual. Again, not a new trend. Most importantly though, journalism is becoming more interactive. The Internet allows instantaneous feedback, and blogging allows the readership to hold the media responsible and accountable for what they produce to a degree they never have been before.

All this is for the better. It will mean better journalism, and better journalists. Blogging won’t kill journalism, the citizen blogger can’t hope to replicate the resources and the professional standards, or the (don’t laugh) commitment to ethics and impartiality of the main stream media.

And by taking the best of what the blog world has to offer and morphing it with journalistic practices, far from dying, journalism only becomes stronger.

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Kate, the Nazis and softwood lumber

As I read various posts around the blogsphere about the Nazi comments at Small Dead Animals, widespread condemnations, and justifications from her supporters that it was all just some misunderstood philosophical point she was making, I’m reminded of an incident from May of 2006.

It was the Liberal leadership race, and during a leadership forum at the LPC(O) convention in Toronto, Bob Rae made the following comments about softwood lumber:

“…it’s true for softwood lumber which is an issue that I’ve been working on for the last little while. Now Mr. Harper might like to say that’s a wonderful deal. Don’t forget, Neville Chamberlain came back from Munich, and held up a piece of paper, and said he had peace in our time. He was wrong. So is Mr. Harper. Really wrong.”

While Bob was clearly making an analogy to appeasement, and wasn’t trying to compare the Americas to Nazis, it was a very poorly chosen analogy that didn’t go over well in the room. I noted, and condemned, it in passing in my blog recap of the speeches. A few days later, Warren Kinsella picked-up on and condemned the comments. And so did, you guessed it, SDA:

Now, don't expect any brouhaha in the media over this. There's a difference between comparing the leader of our largest trading partner to Adolf Hitler, and say - a Conservative MP alluding to Supreme Court Justices as "playing God". That difference is, of course, that Bob Rae is running for the Liberal leadership.

And so did her army of flying monkeys in a rather lengthy comment thread.

Now Bob’s comments, while poorly chosen, pale in comparison to SDA’s recent post. Yet she, and her supporters, who were so quick to condemn Rae, seemingly have no problem with her comments because she was making a philosophical point.

I guess the nuance is lost on us mere mortals.

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Bloggers staff the permanent campaign

As mentioned previously, on Monday I attended an event on blogging and politics called The Permanent Campaign. It was interesting, unfortunately I forgot my notebook there so I don’t have my notes, but I’ll try to share a few highlights.

The keynote was from Ryerson professor Greg Elmer. I met Greg in the bloggers room at the leadership convention in Montreal, he heads the Infoscape Research Lab and is researching blogging and politics. You can get their weekly reports on their Web site.

Elmer shared some interesting statistics. For example, he says Canadian political bloggers aren’t doing much linking to each other. Rather, he says 60 per cent of posts discuss and link stories from the mainstream media.

That sounds accurate, and I think it makes sense. There isn’t much original, investigatory journalism happening on blogs. There is some, and there’s event coverage, but for the most part blogging is akin to column writing. It’s not all media bashing, rather I’d argue linking to a media story provides a primary source and a jumping-off point for a discussion of an issue.

Other points from Elmer indicated the blogs can provide an early-indicator of coming trend changes before the media catches on. As an example, in an analysis of the tone of blogging of the Liberal leadership contenders before the convention he noted there was a substantial increase in Dion’s neutral numbers ahead of Montreal.

He also provided a top five list of the most influential political bloggers, excluding media bloggers, as measured in the first half of March. The list, in order, was Cherniak on Politics, Ezra Levant, Warren Kinsella, BCer in Toronto, Small Dead Animals. While I’m flattered, I can think of a number of others I’d argue should have been on that list ahead of me. I’m not sure what his metrics are, I think it may be weighted towards incoming links, so big links for me in the review period from Paul Wells and Warren Kinsella probably temporarily influenced those numbers. Nevertheless, whatever influence I have I promise to use for good, and not evil. And I was amused to be ahead of SDA.

The broader, and more interesting, theme however was about the permanent campaign, a term coined by Patrick Caldwell, a former advisor to President Jimmy Carter. Technology, says Elmer, has led to a state of permanent campaigning, where the parties and surrogates are constantly trying to shape the narrative and get their message out. Bloggers, he says, are staffers in this permanent campaign, although they’re staffers the parties can’t control. Rather, he said parties should try to motivate their partisan bloggers, as well as use the blogs as an intelligence source.

After Elmer’s keynote and a few technology demos, there was a panel discussion with Stephen Taylor, Andrew Coyne, a former NDP candidate in Scarborough who used Facebook or something, and two other people whose names I forget. The panel discussion was rather tame, it seemed to veer off into U.S. politics and Ron Paul and I began to zone out. Taylor did assure us the Blogging Tories are totally independent from the Conserservative Party though, so there you go. He’d told me earlier he wasn’t going to share his super-secrets for just $25/head though, so alas we’ll have to turn to reverse engineering to see what they put into the ConKoolaide…

CBC Blogwatch’s John Bowman was there and has a post up; MacLeans.ca’s Kady O’Malley was there too and promises a blog report soon.

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Taking care of meme business

I've been tagged in two blog memes in recent days. I'm not a huge fan of these things but in the blogging spirit I shall answer, but I shall not pass the tag on.

The most recent was by James Bowie, asking six bloggers to list a few things they're doing for the Liberal Party.

1. I've been a member of the party for roughly 14 odd years, the bulk of it in rural British Columbia where I was often the only Young Liberal, the average age of the riding association was over 50, and, well, let's just say being Liberal wasn't the cool thing to be, or the easy thing.

2. In addition to my time, many volunteer hours over the years, I regularly make financial donations to the party, both to encourage more grassroots fundraising efforts and because, well, the party really needs the money.

3. I'm going to be spending much of the weekend volunteering for the Martha Hall-Findlay campaign. Canvassing Saturday, training Sunday, and I've taken work off Monday to spend e-day whereever they need me.

4. I write a humble blog, which I try to use in my own way to advance the Liberal cause, whether it be calling attention to the improper doings of the government or the parties that oppose us, or advocating for the policies and direction in which I believe our party, and our country, should be taken.

5. And most importantly, when I believe my party leadership is wrong, is moving in the wrong direction, or is not being true to the ideals and spirit of the Liberal party and the grassroots, I say so forthrightly and honestly. Because I believe a blind faith isn't a strong one, I think groupthink is cancerous, and because I believe in the ideals and spirit of the Liberal party I think I owe it that much. More than anything else, that's the most important thing I can do.
   

The other meme is six unimportant things about myself, tagged by Random Noise.

1. As a child I kissed the Blarney Stone. They say doing so grants you the gift of gab. I'll leave it up to you whether I should ask for a refund.

2. I lived in Germany for four years as a youth, and went back on exchange as a teen. When speaking German, if I didn't know the right word I would subconciously subtitute its French equivelent instead.

3. I'm a dog person. Cats are lame.

4. I'm procrastinate terribly.

5. Me grammar bad.

6. I don't like beer. Just don't like the taste. They say its acquired, but I say why should I make the effort?

Anyone who wants to pick up either meme may consider themselves tagged.

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